It is a further mark of avarice in its last stages that
the rich are surrounded with lies in which they themselves believe.
Thus, in the last phase, there are no parasites but only friends, no
gifts but only loans, which are more esteemed favours than gifts once
were. No one vicious but only tedious, and no one a poltroon but only
slack.
Of Fear in the decline of a State it may be said that it is so much the
master passion of such decline as to eat up all others. Coming by travel
from a healthy State to one diseased, Fear is the first point you take.
Men dare not print or say what they feel of the judges, the public
governors, the action of the police, the controllers of fortunes and of
news. This Fear will have about it something comic, providing infinite
joy to the foreigner, and modifying with laughter the lament of the
patriot. A miserable hack that never had a will of his own, but ran to
do what he was told for twenty years at the bidding of his masters,
being raised to the Bench will be praised for an impartial virtue more
than human. A drunken fellow, the son of a drunkard, having stolen
control over some half-dozen sheets, must be named under the breath or
not at all. A powerful minister may be accused with sturdy courage of
something which he did not do and no one would mind his doing, but under
the influence of Fear, to tell the least little truth about him will put
a whole assembly into a sort of blankness.
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